The author, currently the Director of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC) at the University of California, San Diego, has been working on this book for a long time. It is the product of a decade-long research project, funded by the US Department of Defense, studying innovation and technology in China.
This book encapsulates a voluminous study of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – and especially supreme leader Xi Jinping – are engaged in a grand strategy of transforming China into a gigantic “techno-security state.” By harnessing state-of-the-art technologies, Xi and the CCP hope to realize paramount external and internal goals: externally, to construct a militarily strong China that is better able to assert itself in international affairs and carve out a place for itself as a leading global power (perhaps even supplanting the US); and, internally, reinforcing CCP control over nearly aspects of life, society and the economy inside China, with Xi at the centre as “the chairman of everything.”
According to Cheung, building the techno-security state depends on the interplay between three critical processes: SAMI (selective authoritarian mobilization and innovation), IDAR (introduce, digest, assimilate and re-innovate), and military–civil fusion. SAMI is a top-down, statist technology-development strategy that focuses selectively but powerfully on a few high-priority projects. In other words, it involves putting a lot of resources into a few, highly prized (and hopefully high-impact) mega-projects. It is, as Cheung notes, an innovation process nearly as old as the People's Republic, specifically referring to China's “two bombs, one satellite” strategy for building up a nuclear weapons and strategic missile capability. It is also hardly unique to China: the Manhattan Project – the US effort to build the first atomic bomb – is a classic example of SAMI.
The difference today, Cheung argues, is that China is now pursuing a much more expansive SAMI model. Under Xi, SAMI is no longer focused and selective; rather, it has been inflated to cover a whole range and hosts of projects. In other words, everything is a priority.
SAMI fits the techno-security ideal of state-run innovation, but it still needs the requisite technologies to get the job done. This is where IDAR comes in. IDAR generally emphases the acquisition (legally or otherwise), exploitation and adaptation of foreign technologies, so as to eventually raise the overall standard of the national R&D base. Again, IDAR strategies are not new, nor are they unique to China. IDAR is basically just another example of “technonationalism,” a rather common technological-industrial development strategy. Richard Samuels, in his ground-breaking book on the rise of Japan's postwar arms industry, Rich Nation, Strong Army: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Cornell University Press, 1994), described Tokyo's technonationalist approach to defence industrialization by dividing it into three stages: indigenization, diffusion and nurturing – that is, the acquisition, assimilation and circulation of technology (often foreign in origin) into the national technological base, which is then further “processed” into indigenous R&D. Similar technonationalist strategies have been used by South Korea to develop its automobile and shipbuilding sectors, or by Brazil to become a leading aerospace manufacturer.
The modern twist to China's IDAR lies in the third process: military–civil fusion (MCF). MCF is based in part on the transfer of cutting-edge commercial technologies – particularly information and communications technologies – to the military-industrial sector. More significantly, however, MCF is about creating a common, mutually reinforcing civil-military economic and technology base for developing cutting-edge technologies to serve the civilian but especially the military sectors – in other words, a shared “technology well.” Not surprisingly, MCF has become a “prized strategy” for Xi. MCF is essential, Cheung insinuates, to empowering SAMI and IDAR, which in turn will help to build the techno-security state.
Nevertheless, MCF still faces significant structural, normative, institutional and operational obstacles. Cheung quotes a speech by Xi in 2015 in which he bemoans the lack of policies, ideas, concepts, top-level coordination and management systems to make MCF work. Furthermore, it is uncertain whether Xi's expansive, state-run, top-down innovation system can craft the technologies to build an effective techno-security state. In particular, Xi's personalization of power and his efforts to tightly control everything could severely retard innovation and suppress technological risk-taking. This could particularly affect the development of so-called “fourth industrial revolution” technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and cloud computing, as well as next-generation microelectronics. Nevertheless, even a partially successful Chinese techno-security state, with a more technologically advanced R&D and industrial base, and a subsequently more powerful military, could all seriously challenge the US for global military, economic and geostrategic primacy in the 21st century.
Be forewarned: this is a dense book. Some sections, such as the chapter on MCF, are a particularly deep dive, full of acronyms, policy pronouncements, government initiatives, graphs, matrixes and case studies. That said, this volume ploughs a lot of new ground, especially when it comes to assessing China's efforts to exploit MCF (easily the best chapter). Overall, Cheung makes an important contribution to understanding China's building of a new and potentially sinister national security state.
